Warlocks from Vanilla to the end of BC (or even arguably LK) had this spec called "affliction".

It was centered on the idea of draining the life force of your foes to sustain yourself as you killed them (drain tanking)

In LK they seriously hurt this concept, and introduced death knights, which have a spec called unholy, which does damage with dots the same way, but doesn't require the self-heals due to plate.

The "coup de grace" happened in cataclysm, when they utterly gutted this central mechanic to warlocks and turned warlocks into wal-mart brand mages.

People got the hint, and went death knight or mage.

The sad part is it probably won't come back until blizzard cans GC, who positively hates the vanilla/BC version of affliction, and has architected this utter destruction of what was my favorite spec in the game.

I also say that "bring the player not the class" has NO PLACE in an RPG. RPG's are all about separate classes which each bring something to the table to make the group more powerful than the sum of its individual parts.

If you gut what makes classes unique (enhancement did mediocre dps but made warriors and rogues gods, shadow used to be the mana batteries, etc) then you may as well be playing world of halo-craft and give everyone a battle rifle.

This class is some kind of sick joke. All it takes is 5 minutes playing ANY other class and your Warlock will be collecting dust like the millions before it. It cant be fixed and it is what it is , I hold no hope for MoP and would bet money it will get even worse.

But if it does stay that way that means the development team will have less incentive to work on our class. The more people play a class the more incentive they have to make sure it is fixed, working, fun, etc..

This. When you can't please everyone, you'll focus instead on your largest demographics. It's just business.

Does anyone think the Demo Tanking and Green Fire fiasco would have happened to Paladins? Druids? Mages? Of course not.

If Mages got a glyph that turned Arcane into a sort of off-healer and the majority of the playerbase who cared wanted instead to fully flesh out the glyph into an actual healing spec.....how fast do you think that think would have been buffed?

Instead, Dark Apotheosis is getting the Drain Life treatment. Drain Life filler wasn't just nerfed so it was simply worse than Shadow Bolt, it was completely gutted into in-viability. The only reaction that they have to positive Warlock feedback to something they didn't originally "intend" but weren't smart enough to prevent is relentless nerfs any time someone tries to keep at it. Watch what happens the next time someone posts a video of a Warlock tanking a dungeon even after this last nerf.

I hereby submit that the reason Locks are a minority is simply this: Even in mostly HEROIC gear, and using gimmicks and lining up procs... the biggest number you are going to see is your PET biting the boss' !@#.

Seriously. Check the popularity of DPS classes versus the average crit damage nuke. Warlocks my be doing fine DPS, but we simply don't FEEL like it.

I hereby submit that the reason Locks are a minority is simply this: Even in mostly HEROIC gear, and using gimmicks and lining up procs... the biggest number you are going to see is your PET biting the boss' !@#.Seriously. Check the popularity of DPS classes versus the average crit damage nuke. Warlocks my be doing fine DPS, but we simply don't FEEL like it.

You may very well be on to something there. In a lfr the other day I was the only one in the top ten for total damage that was under 30k dps. I was number 2 in total damage, but was behind someone that pulled 47k. btw recount claimed 27k for me.

I still think its funny that even NOW I can't reliably crit for over 30k to break rageface off a player in Firelands (we went in there and screwed around since our 3rd hear for spine was MIA) w/o having to blow meta or a trinket/enchant proc. 29.5k, 29.7k, 29.8k.. but no 30k shadow bolt crits. But then my pet hits for 84k.

Yeah, I feel powerful.

But I can get on my frost mage and 6 digit on 30sec CD?

Simply put. Pets, including the damned DG, are TOO strong. They force the lock themselves to be substantially weaker because of it.

I started playing early in wotlk, i picked up this class because i liked the demon theme, i remember between lvl 1 and 25 all the spells used to cost so much mana that i ended up killing the current target with the dagger/staff, i almost gave up around those lvls until i hit lvl 30-35 and i started to see some fun in it, more pets, more spells, etc, but i have to admit, it was not "that" fun, mobs used to kill you easily, in bg, you are likely to die first, the toon was getting more and more complicated, but i reached the goal, 80, and it was a HARD trip since there was no dungeon finder and no quest helper.

To the point: you love it or hate it.

i think the complex rotations, the amount of skills, few bugs in pets, hard to play class, is what makes most of the people drop the class at middle lvls : /

Until BoA's Warlocks in Low Lvl PVP and PVE did really well, aside from the Fear Nerf breaking on Damage, it was the worst thing to happen to Low Level Battle Grounds for the Warlocks who relied on DoTs and Fear.... We just can't survive the burst damage long enough and this turns a lot of people off, especially PVP minded ones. Some may say our self healing is an issue too but either way we can't out heal the burst or keep people off of us long enough for the DoTs to do their job.

I was having a conversation with a guild officer of my new guild and was talking to him about how I felt a little like I was being carried (frequently bottom two of the dps) in heroic DS fights.

For context, I was a 1/8H warlock that I only got through PUGing in trade and got recruited and went 5/8H by the next week, so I felt a little.... too fortunate... even though I chewed the glass for the fifth boss with the rest of them.

So I was telling him how I felt like I was being carried and he stopped me and said "Lets face it, right now warlocks are at best gimped and you're really doing pretty well if you were slacking we'd let you know."

And at first I was glad to hear it. After a coupled more tells he says "One of you two warlocks needs to go demo though, we don't benefit from two destros in the same raid" and my heart sank. It was at that moment that I realized what warlocks really are. We're a support class. We're literally brought along to fill a hole, give battle rezzes, and give some buffs to the 'real' DPSers and our DPS is largely immaterial.

Had I known this when I rolled the lock, I wouldn't chose the lock. :(